Consider all of the personal information that you post to message boards and profiles. With some time and effort, people can gather some pretty significant data on you.

Think about it for a moment. If you fully populate your profile, they may already have:

Your full name, including middle name

Your maiden name (if you’re a married & changed your last name)

Your birth date

Your hometown and current town

Your school and educational history

Your spouse’s information (or significant other)

Your employment history

Your religious and personal views

The names of your children and pets

Photos of yourself and many of your family and friends

Add this to the stuff you’ve posted online about yourself in comments and Wall-to-Wall posts….and you’re looking at a LOT of personal information on Facebook alone. This is more stuff than some famous people have published about themselves. And at least they get the side benefit of being famous (and sometimes rich!).

Let’s just remember that “mother’s maiden name” is sometimes a security question for financial institutions. As are offbeat questions about your personal life that, theoretically, only you should know.

If you want to make it even more creepy, go to Google Maps or Google Earth. Type in your home address. If you’re looking at an aerial photo of your house, then everyone knows where you live. And if you post when you’re on vacation on your Facebook status, you may be telling everyone when your house will be vacant.They’ll even provide directions for burglars.

So, yeah. Go update that Facebook profile and keep some of your personal life private.

What is a concern about this move by Facebook is that it is a change in policy. Most ULAs (User License Agreements) make provisions for a change in policy. This particular change in policy comes at a time when Facebook is at its height of popularity and has attracted as many user because of its previously closed privacy policies.

dan

how do we update the privacy settings so that we have maximum privacy?